


Metronome

by TableForThree_Archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Drama, Humor, Multi, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-05-04
Updated: 2005-05-04
Packaged: 2018-04-16 19:16:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4637052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TableForThree_Archivist/pseuds/TableForThree_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ron, Harry, and Hermione - always and forever in time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Metronome

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Jonathan Andrew Sheen, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Table for Three](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Table_for_Three). When traffic and uploads slowed to a trickle, it became difficult to justify the hosting expenses. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in January 2015. I e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this author, please contact me using the e-mail address on the [Table for Three collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/triofic/profile).

Chapter 1: Metronome

**Author's Notes:**

* * *

  
_Author's Notes: Written for my one and only Destra as part of hp_tradeoff Christmas 2004._  
  
**Metronome**  
  
Our ritual begins on the Ides of March.  
  
After supper, everyone at Grimmauld Place sits in the kitchen and forces conversation through this night air thick with fear, and Harry is the quietest, the loneliest, and the first to leave. I watch him slide his chair back, eyes cast down to the floor, and slip out like a shadow, while the Order is so preoccupied with Not Talking About the War that they don't even notice their hero is leaving.  
  
I follow, after one final raunchy joke, pleading overeating or sleepiness or flatulence, don't remember which, because that's what they expect me to do. Stretch to the ceiling, so Mum chides me when the waistband of my briefs shows over my jeans; sass her back as I bury her in an oversized good-night hug; take the stairs three at a time.  
  
By the time Hermione manages to escape, Harry is slouching on Sirius's old-fashioned bed with his legs stretched out, propped up against the headboard. I'm flopped down facing him, leaning my head back against the footboard and resting my feet on the pillow, right by his hip, kicking him gently in time with the ticking of the clock. Hermione knocks softly, but doesn't wait for an answer. She tiptoes in, closes the door behind her, and climbs up onto the side of the bed, sitting Indian-style with her back straight up against the empty air.  
  
"I'm afraid," Harry says, eyes closed.  
  
I reach out and wrap my hand around his stockinged foot, and give it a rub. Hermione leans over, unfolds, tucks her head against his shoulder, wraps her arms around his waist. She looks down at me, and I get it. _There's a space on Harry's other side,_ her brown eyes say, _just about the right size for six foot three of gangly redhead._  
  
My arms are long, and they stretch over Harry's scritchy Weasley jumper and wrap around to pull him and Hermione closer, my fingertips skating over a warm bit of her back, exposed where her shirt has risen up. I bury my face in Harry's messy black hair, and squeeze.  
  
Heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat. We're all three of us in time. Harry shudders and turns to me, hip locking against hip, his hot cheek pressing into my neck. Hermione snuggles closer still, one hand cupping my hip, the other wrapped under Harry's skinny frame, disappearing under his jumper, resting on his still too-flat stomach. I toss one long leg over theirs, rub my foot on Hermione's calf, because it seems like the right thing to do.  
  
Of course he kisses me first. I don't think we could have said it, but we were always just waiting for him. His lips are full, and soft, but firmer than Hannah's, with a soft scrape of tentative stubble that Parvati certainly never had, and instinctively I draw Hermione closer, pushing Harry against me, hard planes of chest and bony shoulders pushing into my body, soft curving hip underneath my hand. I kiss him while she twines herself around us, brushes comfort over our faces, blesses our hair with her caresses. I slide my hand under her jeans waistband, feel the smooth coolness of her bottom, and realize she's cold.  
  
"We should get her under the covers," Harry whispers into my throat, and licks my collarbone.  
  
Hermione pulls him off the bed and standing, towards her, rough and fast, and he moans into her mouth as she pushes up against him in - _oh Merlin's balls_ \- absolutely _all_ the right places. I bite my lip, watching her softness push against his wiry frame, watch his hands trace her hourglass contours with bewildered desire, slide under her shirt, meet her ribs and her shiver.  
  
Eventually I remember to turn back the bed.  
  
I move beside them, touch their necks, and they pull apart, hazy-sleepy, with darkened lips and half-debauched smiles. Their body warmth is a welcome corona in the stern, cool darkness. Harry steps back to pull off his jumper, Hermione's fingers tangle in my belt loops as her tongue tangles with mine, and I think somewhere she must have learned to grow an extra set of hands, because my jeans are around my ankles and she's pushing my jumper and t-shirt off all at once. Harry's gone straight for the briefs, and they catch a bit on the way down, but suddenly I'm _naked_ and they're _not_ , and that is absolutely _not on._  
  
Harry unbuttons Hermione's blouse while I stand behind him and unbutton his jeans, and try not to rub up against him, no matter how much parts of me may want to, because, dear Merlin, _denim_ , and the _chafing_. As his jeans fall to the ground, he pulls her against him, trapping my hand in between them. He traces the curve of her breasts, above and below, finger just slipping under the edge of her sensible white cotton bra. I slide my hand into his boxers and stroke his cock, feeling heat and satin and a slight sticky dampness under the pad of my thumb. She moans, leaning forward, and her bushy brown hair brushes over her unbuttoned collar. He throws his head back onto my shoulder with a bewildered and bewildering gasp.  
  
Hermione's hand brushes against mine, so I let her take over, supporting Harry's weight against my hip and my thigh as she strokes him. I reach around to unhook her bra under the crisp white of her unbuttoned shirt, undo her jeans, reach under her clever hands to cup Harry's balls while he whimpers and writhes. She's tired of being all undone and not undressed, so she leaves him to me, and I guide him to the bed, holding him tight against me as we fall to the mattress with a thump. He's all sorts of sharp pointy bits in all sorts of interesting places, and as I pull him on top of me, she wriggles out of her impossibly tight denims, sheds her unbuttoned blouse and unhooked bra.  
  
She reaches for her wand, still wedged in the back pocket of her puddle of jeans, because almost totally naked and all the way horny, Hermione still can cast one hell of a silencing spell.  
  
I cradle Harry's messy head in my hands, drawing him down for a kiss. He straddles me, grinding his erection against mine, slim hips pushing me into the mattress. I grab his hips, bite my lip and swallow, trying to _ohgod_ keep it together. Hermione lays down beside us, resting on one side, her other making a perfect, sinuous curve, from the dark nimbus of her hair, through smooth shoulder, rounded hip, and milky thigh. I turn to face her, and she leans in to kiss me. As her smooth soft lips part against mine, her hot breath sliding out in a gasp, Harry wraps his hand around his cock and mine, and I break away with a hiss, turning to look at him, green eyes glittering darkly in the wan light of a curtain-filtered half moon. He gives me a feral little smile as he strokes us together, and he murmurs, "No, don't look at me. Look at her."  
  
I do, just as she slides her fingers down gently over the soft downy hair on her sides and belly, and under the thin, wet cotton of her panties.  
  
I moan at the sight, and flip Harry over, pinning him down as he wriggles beneath my weight. My tongue traces a treasure map down his too-thin chest and hollow twitching belly, down the thin line of black hair from his navel to his groin, and _this_ marks the spot, he's full and hard and smooth in my mouth, and I push against him with my tongue, as I watch him grab the sheets and scream.  
  
Even though my eyes never leave his body, his throat, his face, I'm aware of Hermione pushing up into a sitting position, crawling around behind me, wrapping her hands around me, but even though I know she's going to do it, it's still a demonstration of my monumental self-control that I remember to not bite down when her smooth cool fingers first close around my cock. She stokes me slowly, languidly, like there's all the time in the world, and I take it out on Harry, my mouth mad with licking and sucking and a swirl of tongue, my hand feverishly stroking his balls. Her hands are torture. Desperate, I draw one finger down, back, and slide inside him. He is tight and hot and _ohgod_ , sweet and salty-warm, streaming into my mouth as he curses and cries. She gives a wicked little laugh, and does the same thing to me.  
  
_Oh._  
  
All I'm aware of, in that instant, is Hermione's hot body on my back and cool hands on my cock, inside my arse, and Harry trembling and beautiful beneath me, and oh. Heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat. Always and forever in time.  
  
Harry sits up, leaning back up against the headboard as I roll her over and into his lap, and she sits between his legs, my head on her thigh, as we tickle and tease and tempt her until she's bucking and crying for our touch. I slide her sodden panties off as he nibbles her neck, one hand drawing endless spiral designs over ribs, hip, and nipples.  
  
She tastes different, a spicier tang, but Harry's always been darker, quieter, softer in some ways, despite her hills and valleys, despite her satin-smooth curves. She moans and whimpers and one time knees me in the eye - "Oh, sorry, _oh_ \- " and Harry silences her with a contortionist kiss, leaning over her shoulder, tilting her head back and away, and she comes with a cry.  
  
Sleepy and sated, we curl up around each other, with kisses and caresses, pull the covers up over us, and settle in for the night. Heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat. In our own perfect time.  
  
This becomes our nightly ritual. Harry slips away first, like a shade or a ghost; I leave with a shout, like a blustering wind; Hermione joins us with her steady, practical grace, in the molasses-thick darkness of our war-torn night. This bed is our haven, and this room our sphere, and we're whole, together.  
  
Heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat.  
  
It's been three months since the Ides of March, and Dumbledore came to us this morning. _It's all come down to the end,_ he said, and we didn't reply. We know it. We know it's time. This might be our last night together, Harry, Hermione, and I. No one wants to say it, just because we'd hate to be trite.  
  
So we touch each other in the sliver of moonlight, him to her to me to him and back around and back again. I see us now, frozen in time, this perfect and unbroken circle, and I breathe. Heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat. We breathe in time.  
  
When he comes between her legs with a shudder, and I come inside him with a cry, she strokes our hair and shoulders and watches us with her dark and hooded eyes. I am afraid. I bury my face in his shoulder, because I'm afraid. They know. They understand. On this night, they are braver than me. Tonight, as we curl up around each other, it's my turn in the middle, their arms and bodies a barrier around me, keeping me safe from tomorrow.  
  
They fall asleep first, and I close my eyes, relishing the feeling of Harry's soft black hair on my shoulder, and Hermione's strong slim arm across my lap. As I drift off to sleep, I think I'm glad that they, at least, will see the day after the war. I breathe in their breath, and silently remind them, _I'd die before I let anyone touch either of you._  
  
We will dream in time.  
  
I know the answer, _the bushy-haired girl says,_ I know how we can win, _and she writes up the equation, a complicated string of Greek letters, on the blackboard. The redhead and the boy with the scar squint at the squiggles, as though they're reading...well, Greek. She sighs, even though she's not actually surprised._ Don't worry about it, she says, _dusting the chalk off her hands._ I'll handle it.  
  
_And in her dream, the girl thinks,_ I'd die before I let them hurt either of you.  
  
We dream in time.  
  
_Chaos and madness and green, green everywhere, green like my eyes like my mother's eyes green that means death, but not red-death like Sirius, just the green death of_ everyone else, _and I know he's in here somewhere I know he's in here I can feel him I can smell him I have to find him I have to kill him and you two mustn't be here, you_ need to go, _I can do this on my own but I couldn't bear to lose you, you know...then you're pulling back the curtain to show him to me, and he can see you now, and he's striking now, but don't worry, I love you, I won't let him destroy you, I'll throw myself into that green light, absorb it like a sponge a vacuum my cousin in a candy store, because I would die before I let him harm either of you..._  
  
That night, we dreamt in time.  
  
In later days, Hermione will joke that someone really ought to write a handbook for the up-and-coming supervillain, something with a recommended reading list of educational science fiction books, which will come packaged with a randomly selected James Bond movie, strictly for instructional purposes. She'll say that the handbook needs to include the words "DON'T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE TWICE!" on a high-gloss poster, neatly folded up and tucked into the back, for convenient posting in a highly visible location in the up-and-coming supervillain's lair. Then she'll laugh so hard she'll snort her pumpkin juice, or have to suddenly run to go have a pee, and Harry will try to swallow his laughter as I finger the soft hair at the nape of his neck, grinning madly.  
  
It was moderately less funny at the time.  
  
The Manor was a ruin, stinking with the smell of burned flesh and smoking wood, by the time we found him. I'd lost track of how many masked figures I'd killed. He was waiting for us, healthy, hearty, and whole, a young man again, with an evilly handsome smile. He was sitting in an armchair, just resting, waiting for us, and his shoes were perfectly shined. The trapdoor slammed shut behind us, and he laughed a little.  
  
We were all tapped out, by then.  
  
We moved quickly to surround him because that's what we'd been trained to do, and we were fresh out of thinking and fresh out of spells, and all we had left was muscle memory and exhausted determination.  
  
The curse fell out quickly - _Avada Kedavra_ \- from his tall and powerful form, and his wand sliced through the air like a conductor's baton.  
  
Heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat.  
  
There were tears in my eyes, and the word fell from my lips without a single second thought.  
  
"No," he said.  
  
"No," she said.  
  
"No," I said.  
  
Three bodies, one breath. A triangle of green, an emerald chain, shot out around us. Our hunched, tired forms became pillars of light, and we looked to each other, bewildered, as, once again, his curse failed to hit.  
  
The triangle collapsed in an explosion of gemstone light, and then little bits of Dark Lord dust were sparkling in our hair and on the floor, and we stared at each other in utter astonishment. Somehow we'd _won._  
  
Heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat.  
  
Hermione began to laugh. Great, hiccupping giggles that shook her little frame and made her bottom tremble rather fetchingly, and I joined in with my irregular, barking guffaw, and Harry's tentative, hesitant chuckle joined in last of all, and we sat down on the floor and laughed until tears streamed down our cheeks, leaving streaks in the dirt and the powdered Voldemort that covered our faces.  
  
When the rest of the Order, triumphant and tired, finally got around to unlocking the cellar, they found us down there sleeping, curled up in a ball, arms around arms around arms, together and whole.  
  
Heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat.  
  
Always and forever in time.  
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at [Table for Three](http://www.triofic.com) \- <http://www.triofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=13>


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